I still don't know why people recommend foobar. I did my own comparison to JR MC, the recently released at that time Audivana (spelling?), MS Groove player, VLC, and a few others, and foobar was the worst and was audibly terrible. (It's also a nightmare to set up it's UI.) Not just slightly colored or a little finicky here and there, but purely terrible.

Before the fanboys start chiming in... Yes, both Aiso and wasapi was used on the comparisons using the recommended addons, and I tried several other plugins / configurations to "fix" the sound. How foobar can use wasapi or Aiso and still fuck up the sound is alarming.

I still don't know why people recommend foobar. I did my own comparison to JR MC, the recently released at that time Audivana (spelling?), MS Groove player, VLC, and a few others, and foobar was the worst and was audibly terrible. (It's also a nightmare to set up it's UI.) Not just slightly colored or a little finicky here and there, but purely terrible.

Before the fanboys start chiming in... Yes, both Aiso and wasapi was used on the comparisons using the recommended addons, and I tried several other plugins / configurations to "fix" the sound. How foobar can use wasapi or Aiso and still fuck up the sound is alarming.

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What did you say was the best? JR MC?

I've always felt that foobar is a neat idea, but far from perfect for reasons you listed.

I've always felt that foobar is a neat idea, but far from perfect for reasons you listed.

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JR MC, yep. It was just the best sounding, most complete out of the box, easiest to use solution I could find. The downside to it being that they release a new version every other month and expect you to pay for it. (That's being sarcastic, but the frequent update cycle is costly to stay on top of and it is an issue for some. I've been using v22 for some time now, and no complaints here.)

Also, I think it was Amarra not Audirvana I tried. It was so buggy it would literally crash my system. When it did work, it did sound fine. Maybe it got better since then, I don't know.

Audirvana is the one ported from OSX, yes? I haven't tried that one yet, but it has a nice pedigree from the Mac side of computing. I hear it's still going through many growing pains on the Windows side though.

If they ever put a sane price on Roon, I might try it. $120 a year - as a subscription service - just to play my own files... well, that seems like a rip-off. I don't care if it has the world's best interface and a metadata library that's second to none. Just not worth it to me. I would rather pay my 40 bucks and be done with it then have to constantly renew a software license.

I still don't know why people recommend foobar. I did my own comparison to JR MC, the recently released at that time Audivana (spelling?), MS Groove player, VLC, and a few others, and foobar was the worst and was audibly terrible. (It's also a nightmare to set up it's UI.) Not just slightly colored or a little finicky here and there, but purely terrible.

Before the fanboys start chiming in... Yes, both Aiso and wasapi was used on the comparisons using the recommended addons, and I tried several other plugins / configurations to "fix" the sound. How foobar can use wasapi or Aiso and still fuck up the sound is alarming.

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Yeah, the default audio on foobar is pretty awful, it can be fixed but it's a lot of work. I like it as a format converter and file tagging tool though.

Potentially ncmpcpp + mpd if you're not on Windows? There's really no reason not to use fb2k with its near unlimited customization if you're not subscribed to the idea that software has a different 'sound' to another.

I still don't know why people recommend foobar. I did my own comparison to JR MC, the recently released at that time Audivana (spelling?), MS Groove player, VLC, and a few others, and foobar was the worst and was audibly terrible. (It's also a nightmare to set up it's UI.) Not just slightly colored or a little finicky here and there, but purely terrible.

Before the fanboys start chiming in... Yes, both Aiso and wasapi was used on the comparisons using the recommended addons, and I tried several other plugins / configurations to "fix" the sound. How foobar can use wasapi or Aiso and still fuck up the sound is alarming.

Click to expand...

*This may be needed to be moved to another thread since it doesn't relate and/or contribute to the thread topic. I apologize if this clogs this thread in the meantime.

Thank you for pointing this out. I would have never even considered the possibility that there would be an audible difference between the two.

After trying the free trial of JRMC and comparing the two I am completely dumbfounded at the fact that Foobar can make a lossless WAV rip directly from a CD sound like a low bitrate Spotify/Youtube stream. It almost sounds like there is an upper bass to lower midrange emphasis as well compared to JRMC. I can't believe the clarity and high-end resolve I was missing while using Foobar. They're both using Wasapi, so what in the world would cause this?

I can't believe the clarity and high-end resolve I was missing while using Foobar.

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Yeah I've been trying the free trial for JRMC after @Elnrik's comment and I have been noticing that the transients seem more defined on JRMC over foobar as well. I really didn't want to believe there would be a difference, but it does seem incrementally better.

Conversely, I told my coworker the same (he's using a Modi 3 + MJ2 + TR-X00 PH) and he hasn't noticed much of a difference so... YMMV.

JR MC, yep. It was just the best sounding, most complete out of the box, easiest to use solution I could find. The downside to it being that they release a new version every other month and expect you to pay for it. (That's being sarcastic, but the frequent update cycle is costly to stay on top of and it is an issue for some. I've been using v22 for some time now, and no complaints here.)

Also, I think it was Amarra not Audirvana I tried. It was so buggy it would literally crash my system. When it did work, it did sound fine. Maybe it got better since then, I don't know.

Audirvana is the one ported from OSX, yes? I haven't tried that one yet, but it has a nice pedigree from the Mac side of computing. I hear it's still going through many growing pains on the Windows side though.

If they ever put a sane price on Roon, I might try it. $120 a year - as a subscription service - just to play my own files... well, that seems like a rip-off. I don't care if it has the world's best interface and a metadata library that's second to none. Just not worth it to me. I would rather pay my 40 bucks and be done with it then have to constantly renew a software license.

Click to expand...

I prefer the sound of Audirvirna the best, but you're right about it being buggy. It can and will crash if you have a large library or have a few corrupt old mp3 files on your system that you don't know about. So most times I stick to JRMC. I tried a trial of the newest version but couldn't tell the difference from version 21 so I didn't upgrade.